His is not a well-worn path to community leadership, but trailblazers are supposed to find their own way, aren't they? Garrison is doing just that on four wheels and a plywood board.

Skateboarding has taught Garrison a few things about prejudice and community in ways that are less about black and white and more about misguided perceptions. From his unique perspective, the sharp-minded community organizer has set out to build a better community - from Slavic Village to Detroit Shoreway to Garfield Heights - by connecting kids and communities with skateboards.

"The idea is talking to the kids, understanding who they are and developing relationships with them,'' he said. "These kids who are skating together and had never met each other hopefully build long-term relationships. We're planting multiple seeds because this is what works, this is what builds a community.''

Garrison, 25, has been awarding free boards and lessons - in skateboarding and in life - to area youth since 2008. Now working with Slavic Village Development, his current project goal is to raise $4,500 in donations so he can build and distribute 100 free skateboards to kids at recreation centers across Greater Cleveland. His fundraiser (gofundme.com/skatersnextdoor) is more than halfway to the goal.

Each skateboard is to be earned, not given. Kids are to receive the boards after performing 40 hours of community service and attending his 10 free tutoring sessions at area rec centers to be determined. He'll teach skateboarding as well as how to develop and achieve personal goals, just like any other extracurricular activity.

Garrison believes skateboarding opens up the same channels for creativity, problem solving and achievement as equestrian, painting or boxing.

"With skateboarding, the way to get better is to practice. You have to focus,'' he said. "People are thinking, 'I've got to get this trick and figure out how to do it.' It creates the atmosphere for you to think about how to set a goal, achieve a goal that you feel is important.''

The lone skateboarder

Garrison graduated from Life Skills Academy at 16 and has yet to earn a college degree, but comes across as though he has a Ph.D in sociology with deep understanding of both government bureaucracy and street life. His enthusiasm is as infectious as his smile is disarming.

His title with Slavic Village Development and Ward 5 is community organizer - hey, isn't that how Barack Obama started out? - and there's an overwhelming sense that this is a young man going somewhere beyond the reach of a board and a push.

"He's a real go-getter. He relates really well to a lot of different folks,'' said Chris Alvardo, executive director of Slavic Village Development. "He's open minded, willing to listen and believes in the work that he's doing. He enjoys this neighborhood.''

Garrison grew up poor with eight brothers and sisters being raised by a single mom in East Cleveland and Slavic Village. His mother, Tressa Garrison, was tasked with caring for a sick grandmother and a daughter with spina bifida. Ja'Ovvoni did his part. Tressa Garrison often came home from work to a house cleaned from top to bottom by Ja'Ovvoni, whose name she said was inspired by her favorite deli, Giovanni's on Mayfield Road.

Tressa bought Ja'Ovvoni his first skateboard at Walmart, which he quickly broke, then another, and then better-made ones as he progressed. She told him to pursue his dream, even if it was skateboarding. Ja'Ovvoni said his mother never let her kids go hungry or let them lose sight their dreams.

"I said if it's a job, make sure it's something that's fulfilling your heart. He stuck with skateboarding because he loves it,'' Tressa Garrison said.

At first, that required breaking down prejudices. Ja'Ovvoni rolled through some tough neighborhoods as a lone skateboarder getting jeered while attempting and failing new tricks.

"Awww, white boy! Awww, you stink, Tony Hawk,'' they'd yell.

It drove him.

"Skateboarding was that perfect mental and physical challenge. Coming out of my house and skating on my street every day was a challenge knowing I'll probably get laughed at,'' he said. "It was a confidence builder for me to not let these outside forces dictate what I can or cannot do.

"After you hear it so long, I started understanding why some people don't go far in things they believe in because our social atmosphere has so much pressure, it almost forces you out of something you could have done great with. I didn't have any friends skating. I was just solo, mentally keeping myself strong because it didn't seem cool or it didn't fit in with what was accepted.''

Expanding horizons

Now the president of Public Square Group, a skateboard-promoting nonprofit, Garrison recalls his youth riding RTA from East Cleveland to Lakewood to just use its skatepark without being hassled. It's one of the reasons he named his fledgling skateboard company Skate RTA (Renegade Transit Authority).

His passion is to introduce skateboarding to urban youth while simultaneously making it acceptable in the eyes of kids and adults. He strives to attack skateboarding "slacker" stereotypes among those who believe where skateboarders go, trouble follows. Garrison said the opposite is true. In 2010, he named his outreach Skaters Next Door to emphasize that having a skateboarder next door "is a good thing.''

"Adults think it's dangerous,'' he said. "Compared to what? When I grew up, I knew kids who were going into houses and stealing copper or selling drugs. For me, skateboarding is something I hope kids do because, whether they think it's dangerous or not, it gives them some idea of focus and identity. That's what a lot of kids I meet don't have.''

Miles Brown hits a patch of sunlight at the Crooked River Skate Park in the Flats in March.The only skatepark in Cleveland opened in November.

Garrison developed his lessons and boards into community programming he uses in several Cleveland neighborhoods and recreation centers, as well as in East Cleveland and Garfield Heights. He helps lead the annual East Meets West Skateboard Festival in Slavic Village, which draws a diverse group of skaters from across the region. And he constantly lobbies Cleveland officials to add skating elements to city parks.

The Cleveland skateboarding scene received a huge boost in November when the public Crooked River Skate Park opened in the flats behind Merwin's Wharf. It is the only public skatepark in Cleveland. The concrete park features curves, ramps, rails and a wavy halfpipe built by one of the nation's top skatepark designers, but it is somewhat hidden in a quiet location between bustling bridges and the Cuyahoga River. Several skaters there this week gave it rave reviews.

"I skated a lot of parks in California and this one is right up there with them,'' said Sean Cahill, 17, of Hudson. "I like this view. This park really captures the Cleveland style, all the industry around it and the warehouses. This is where Cleveland started.''

Garrison likes the park, too, but worries the location is too far removed from residential neighborhoods. He said the city spent too much money on it when smaller parks coupled with programming spread throughout the city would have been more useful.

Programming is key for any community that builds a skatepark, he said.

"If you put in parks, but don't put in programming or events to keep people engaged in a positive sense, then they don't feel included into the bigger blueprint of what the community is,'' he said. "Otherwise, you just have a space, and it's just kids there doing whatever, or doing drugs because you have set a tone to perpetuate that negative sense.

"That's why I'm so bent on showing programming is the meat and cheese, whereas the skatepark is just the bread.''

Garrison, whose original goal was to be a professional skateboarder, wants to open gates for the future generations, if not to skateboarding careers, then to something else with skateboarding as a catalyst.

He makes that clear at the start of every lesson.

"There's 25 people here,'' he'll tell kids. "I didn't go to college, but I'm standing here and I'm giving you a skateboard because I figured out a way to make it happen. This is what I love. This is what made me who I am. It was skateboarding that gave me focus.

"Being a skateboarder, it put me outside even my own race of inclusion, and after that, I started looking at people different. It gave me an opportunity to think, 'How can I change people's perception?'"

Garrison is working to change perceptions, 100 free skateboards at a time.

"Sometimes,'' he said, "the ideas people hold in their minds about others are no more real than what a lie is.''